Radical Art – A Story of Photocopies

So any of you who know me personally or follow my blog, know that I am the extremely proud parent of some very creative children, one of whom is an Animation/Illustration student at MICA in Baltimore. Many of Geo’s illustrations have graced these very posts, and if you want some awesome entertainment, you should watch the video below.

Hand animation takes a lot of paper; each and every movement needs to be individually drawn. Geo did several rough projects last year, and while cleaning up before returning to school [under the threat of having to take public transportation back to Baltimore], they decided to recycle several huge stacks of drawings. Always trying to do my part in saving trees and the environment, I rescued all this paper (which still had one side blank) for printing; many of the pages had minimal drawing on them and were perfect for my planning purposes.

We are fortunate at my school to have a Copy Center, where you can submit work, and 24 (sometimes 48) hours later, have everything printed, stapled, and neatly stacked. For those who plan ahead, it’s a wonderful resource (anyone who has ever worked in a small public school with 2 [repeatedly breaking] machines for 20 teachers will know just how fabulous this is). The Copy Center, however, is only as good as its staff, and although I have been getting my copies reliably in terms of timing, I have had numerous orders messed up – things printed double-sided that needed to be single-sided (because they were being cut up) and vice versa – despite what I try to make ever clearer instructions. Aggravation and wasted paper.

Last week, I decided I was going to submit everything exactly as it needed to be photocopied, so that written instructions were superfluous (although I did leave those as well). If things needed to be single-sided, I submitted them on separate orders, and if copies needed to be double-sided, I made sure my original was printed double-sided.

But several worksheets (graphic organizers for Adding/Subtracting Radicals Expressions, for example) I submitted had been printed on the back of Geo’s animation sketches. It didn’t occur to me that the gentleman in the Copy Center wouldn’t realize that a sketch of an angry man didn’t need to be printed on the back of a math worksheet (but then again, who knows what his high school math experience was like?).

My ENTIRE copy order this week had animation sketches on the back. It made for a great diversion in Algebra 2. Some of the worksheets were cut in half, and the students compared and traded halves of pictures. We talked about animation and art school, and my kid’s talent. : )

But how do you really feel about radical expressions?

And some of my students added their own spin to the art – or did the art add a spin to the math?